Thank you Peter

This is a Swiss card for Peter at Worldman to thank him for writing about this blog in such a lovely way. I know that he comes from Montreux in Switzerland and this one is from Flüelen (Fluela). Now I think I know where the St. Bernard's dogs come from!

This card is semi modern and was posted in 1954. There is a franking on the back: Europäische Fernsehwochen television?

A walk in the woods

I thought that this weekend we could all go back in time to 1903 and take a walk through the woods. I think we’ll all manage to sit together on the bench where we can talk about all of our different countries. Which way should we go next left or right?

Charruyer Park

This is the park in La Rochelle, it hasn’t really changed at all. I’ve been looking through some postcards of the park and there often appear to be the same pair of swans. Today we have black swans too. The park was left to the town by Madame Charruyer about 150 years ago. The ‘lungs’ of La Rochelle, it stretches for a length of 2 kilometres through the middle of town.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

While I was clearing out an album we’d bought, I came across some photos. I bet these two were hot in their fur coats. This one has a postcard back. When I was small my mum had photos taken of my sister, brother and me every year by a ‘mobile’ photographer. A lot of those photos had postcard backs too, and it wasn’t so long ago!

I think the album had been kept by a young lady called Francine. Someone wrote to her at the end of the thirties saying that they hoped she would soon be a bride as she was now old enough and they had heard rumour of a young man. I found some cards from ‘the young man’ who was a soldier. They stopped shortly after the war started. There weren’t any more cards from young men after that. I hope that Francine found someone after the war.

La Rochelle Ladies

These ladies are typical of the women who worked along the shore at the beginning of the 20th century. There lives would have been very hard. The climate is cold, damp and very windy in winter and the summer sun is very hot. Throughout history the women of La Rochelle have been special, The first was Eleanor Of Aquitaine who owned la Rochelle, she married the King of France and later the King of England. I’m sure that the women of La Rochelle would have played a courageous part in the sieges where many Rochelais lost their lives. The women of La Rochelle were also amongst the most determined passengers to the Americas.

Later on, some of the ladies of La Rochelle were to become famous amongst sailors and ships crews from all over the world….

Auction success!

We went and bought a lot of new stock at an auction yesterday afternoon. There were other items, the most unusual being the sale of a binocular collection. There were posters too, this is where you can read about them. I always try to keep very still during an auction, I’m terrified of accidentally bidding for something I don’t want. Rob asked me to keep a running total of our bids so that we didn’t overspend, it went so fast I could hardly keep up!

This is just one card from a set that was in an album. We don’t usually bother much with fantasy cards, but I like these. It was printed in Berlin and sent in 1905 to wish someone a Happy New Year.

Mayday

For the month of May a Mayday card. In France the tradition is to give a bunch of Lily-of-the-Valley for luck on May 1st. This year the flowers came from Germany, as the hot weather had caused the French Lily-of-the-Valley to flower too early.

This card carried bad news, the sender’s house had been burgled and she was sleeping badly because of it.